Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I have seen enough photographs of unsafe race tracks and read enough transcripts of fatal and debilitating accidents at events here in the US to say something has to change. I can no longer go on listening to “that’s how we have always done it,” “we have not had an accident before, “and yes “it was good enough for Can-Am.”  That was only forty years ago, so what’s changed?

Look around, nothing is built or operates “as we have always done it.” Can you just turn up and get on an airplane, and is it driven by propellers? Do men with red flags still walk in front of cars in England? Does LA still have smog now we have emission controls and do cars still do 8 mpg? Does Detroit still build cars that are “Unsafe at Any Speed” as exposed by Mr.Nader? No, no and no. Most of motor sport in the US is operating in a time warp, and seems divorced from the rest of our activities.

Where else can an owner go and build a tower block, road, bridge or airport without resorting to professional services, working to standards and obtaining approvals? In motor sport an owner blissfully unaware of any standards for construction or operation can set up shop and start, and then ten years later say he has all this experience. Yes, usually of doing it incorrectly. There is a great joke about the guy who fell off the Empire State and as he passed some lower windows an office worker asked how he was doing. “So far so good” was the answer.

Every week across America thousands of spectators, officials and competitors risk death and injury by attending local events at substandard facilities run by untrained and unqualified people. That is not totally their fault, the lack of published standards or licensing procedures as occur in most of the rest of the civilized world cause them to be unaware that they are doing anything wrong. The National Fire Protection Authority has a guideline for safe operations at facilities, NFPA 610, but how many people know of it, and as a guideline it has no legal standing other than best practice. It does not cover construction, nor a lot of the operation, but it is something.

The motor sport authorities are diverse in the US under an umbrella group called ACCUS that represents us to the world body, but plays a limited role in National and local events. The variety of racing bodies on two and four wheels makes some unified approach probably impossible. The insurers play a major role in this situation, so are they the ones to fix it?

How is it that the civil authorities do not become more involved, as though what goes on at a motor sport even cannot be criminally negligent? God forbid we get to the situation of Italy where the police and courts become involved, ask Sir Frank Williams how that works. But I see definite circumstances where in my opinion criminal negligence should be invoked, and perhaps this is what is required to make track owners and operators wake up to their responsibility and liability.

The media and the public create an outcry for answers when a high profile racer like Dan Wheldon dies, so what sort of Tsunami of opinion would be created if they knew that it was a weekly occurrence at the lower levels of the sport. Elderly contractors dying after being dragged onto a “hot” track to give a quote on some striping. Young children dying or being terribly burned due to the lack of proper procedures and emergency response? Innocent spectators being hit by debris and being killed or maimed for life because of incorrectly designed walls and fences? And that is the tip of the iceberg, just the very small proportion of the incidents that go to litigation and the even smaller number I get to see.

So, what to do? I can no longer go on accepting this is how it has to be. I don’t know how to change this, but I am going to try, starting now. I will use what is left of my professional life to achieve this. Initially I believe it should start by working with the sport and those involved like ACCUS and the insurers, and groups like the SCCA who have at least attempted to address this issue. Failing that then it is time the public knew, and who knows where that leads. We do not want the Government involved, and I care about the sport too much to close down these facilities. The joke is, and it is a bad one, that in most instances the fixes are not expensive; moving walls, grooming run offs, building proper tire walls and fences. These can be done by the track maintenance or volunteers, and staff can be trained and written procedures put in place; cost and ignorance cannot be an excuse any more for not doing it right. As I wrote the other day, being at a race track does not make you immortal.